Fars News Agency mistranslates and misleads

The Fars News Agency, an official Iranian regime outlet quoted Ambassadar Ali Ahani, their ambassador to Paris. He was “reiterating” – in his words – that their “doctrine rejects acquisition of atomic weapons and it is a principle stated at the highest level by Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei,” Ahani said in an interview with the French Boulevard Voltaire news-analysis website.

First of all… let me remind you that this infamous fatwa is actually a myth (see previous post).

Secondly; it appears something got lost in translation here…

What the ambassador actually said was:

“Notre doctrine nous interdit d’avoir accès à l’arme nucléaire”

The word he used was ‘accès’ and not ‘acquerir’. Acquiring nuclear weapons are very much on the table in this scenario.

The UN nuclear watchdog has also carried out frequent surprise inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites so far, but found nothing to support West’s allegations that Tehran pursues military purposes.

Iran refuses to grant full access to its nuclear sites and military facilities. Surprise inspections of the carefully chosen nuclear sites do not count as transparency. Even the sites that have been open to inspection are, according to the New York Times, much more dangerous than we all thought…